Frolic, Between Realms, Wroht, The Relative Minimum
- Hectic
- Aug 5
- 2 min read
August 2, 2025
Neck of the Woods
San Francisco, CA
Saturday night metal showcase at the Neck of the Woods, out at 5th avenue and Clement in San Francisco’s Richmond district. I don’t think I had seen a show at this club since the 1990s, when it was the Last Day Saloon. But they do seem to be getting more metal shows this year, with a couple of larger shows coming up on our calendar for October and November.
This was the last night of Frolic’s first ever tour, the 10 show “Frolic through the West” that took them out to Texas and back, wrapping up with a hometown show.
The opener was a band called The Relative Minimum, a progressive metal band from San Luis Obispo on California’s central coast. They were on tour with Between Realms, and were not on the flyer originally, so I didn’t know there was a 4th band on the bill. The Relative Minimum is a progressive metal band with both screamy and clean vocals, tons of samples, and a very modern metal sound. Not really my cup of tea, but a good live band, and they did seem to have brought out a few young local fans to this all-ages show.
Wroht (pronounced Rot I think?) is a death metal band from Oakland with some technical and groove metal influences. This was my first time seeing them, and they played an intense and entertaining set. I guess they are back together after a 4 year hiatus, and released their second album Dissolution in October 2024. Definitely worth checking out if you see them on a metal bill, which you should since they are Bay Area locals.
Between Realms was the support act, a killer death metal band from Hangtown, CA (aka Placerville, up in California’s gold country). I had not heard of these guys before, but they played a blistering set and sounded great. I’m not sure how often they get on the road, I think this was a 4 night mini-tour with The Relative Minimum, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Between Realms on a larger death metal tour in the future.
Frolic closed out the evening with their usual energetic mix of thrash and death metal. They are really one of the Bay Area’s up and coming bands, and never disappoint. They were riding high at the end of a 2 week tour, with a bunch of their friends in the crowd. It was a typical Frolic set of songs well known to most of the crowd, with their standard cover of Exodus’ “A Lesson in Violence”, though they did play one new song.
This final show did not feature Apraxia, the humorous death metal side project of Edgar and Lenny from Frolic, but for the rest of the tour apparently they were doing double duty playing in both bands each night. Hard working young guys!
–Hectic
